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LL-MAP

The LINGUIST List is pleased to announce the availability of a limited number of paid internship positions for the summer of 2014 at the LINGUIST offices in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Internships are available for a three-month period between May and August 2014.

Interns will have the opportunity to participate in the daily operations of the LINGUIST List and its parent organization, the Institute for Language Information and Technology (ILIT) at Eastern Michigan University. ILIT serves the discipline of linguistics by providing digital tools and services that sustain the scientific analysis of language and by disseminating high-quality language data and linguistic information. In addition to the LINGUIST List website and mailing list, ILIT manages a number of grant-funded projects that develop the cyberinfrastructure of linguistics; interns may expect to work primarily on the following projects:

(1) Language and Location: A Map Annotation Project (LL-MAP: http://www.llmap.org): This project began as a joint NSF-sponsored project of Eastern Michigan University and Stockholm University and is hosted as an ongoing project at ILIT. In LL-MAP, language information is integrated with data from the physical and social sciences by means of a Geographical Information System (GIS). Tasks for this project include map-making (using Global Mapper and Google Earth) and using the LL-MAP Scholar’s Workbench to style and upload maps. You will also be responsible to help develop a new interface for the map viewing facility.

(2) MultiTree (http://multitree.org): The MultiTree project is a digital library of scholarly hypotheses about language relationships and subgroupings. This information is organized in a searchable database with a web interface, and each hypothesis is presented graphically as a diagram of a family tree. Typical tasks for this project include researching language relationship hypotheses and entering this information into the MultiTree database.

(3) Endangered Language Catalog (ELCat: http://www.endangeredlanguages.com/): This project launched in fall 2011 with funding from the NSF. The ELCat project is responsible for posting data about endangered languages with evaluation from global experts. This information is used to confront the issue of language endangerment by allowing users to upload data and multimedia files regarding thousands of languages in order to document, preserve, and teach others about each language. Potential interns will be responsible for resource discovery, reading scholarly articles, data entry, and bibliography management.

(4) 19th International Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG) Conference: This conference will take place from July 17, 2014 through July 19, 2014 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The focus of this conference is to promote interaction and collaborations among researchers interested in non-derivational approaches to grammar, where grammar is see as the interaction of (perhaps violable) constraints from multiple levels of structuring, including those of syntactic categories, grammatical relations, semantics, and discourse. There will also be a special panel session on “Language Documentation and Linguistic Theory” with a focus on under-resourced and endangered languages. Interns will be responsible for assisting with the design and printing of conference materials, assisting non-local attendees with finding local events, and other tasks to be determined by the local conference organizers.

(5) Grammar Engineering Platform Development: The goal of this project is to create an online IDE for morphological analyzers (and potentially syntactic grammars) where linguists are able to simply copy and paste their data into a form online, specify grammars and rules, and perform analyses and parses of data. Interns will learn about XFST, FOMA, Finite State Morphology, Context Free Grammar, Unification Grammars, linguistic theories, documentation standards, java, python, and Django development techniques. Interns do not necessarily need to already know about the above. On-site training workshops will be provided. If you already have experience with these tools, please make sure to mention this on your application and/or supplemental materials.

(6) Website, App, and Localization Development: LINGUIST List is working on creating a new website and posting system. Interns will help to create not only a new website, but also to develop applications compatible with the iOS and Android systems. For the localization, interns that have a higher reading ability in languages other than English are highly desired. Training on localization, app development, and the website creation will be provided. If you already have experience with these tools, please make sure to mention this on your application and/or supplemental materials.

Interns are required to work 40 hours per week, Monday through Friday, and will receive a stipend of US $8.50 per hour. Housing is not provided, although we are able to provide some assistance in locating accommodations.

International applicants must have a visa that permits them to work in the US. LINGUIST List will work with applicants to obtain a visa; however, this is not guaranteed, as the administrative procedures involved are subject to university approval.

Applicants with external funding or support are encouraged to apply to work here as an extension of the internship program.

The LL-MAP team digitized a collection of 157 maps on the Yup’ik dialect in Alaska courtesy of a grant (Integrating Cartographic Elements: Creating Resources Emphasizing Arctic Materials; #0952335) from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. In this collection, Jacobson (1998) mapped dialectal differences from surveys that were completed by bilingual teachers in 61 out of 68 Yup’ik villages.

Each map contains a legend that tells how often each term is used in the 61 Yup’ik villages. For instance, below we can see one map that compares Cottonwood and Balsam Poplar against each other. From this we can see that some villages will use both interchangeably, while others will use one term exclusively.

Map of the variations for “COTTONWOOD,” BALSAM POPLAR in Yup’ik

Want to use LL-MAP images in your papers or work? We have a feature that allows you to download or print maps for your own use. Simply click the print button under the “Map Viewer Option”and adjust the size of the image you want to print. Our maps can be freely used under the Creative Commons 3.0 Unported license. You are welcome to use any of our maps aslong as LL-MAP is cited as the digital source; however, since most of our maps are digitized from original images, it will also be necessary to cite the original sources, if they exist. Additionally, you may need to contact the original authors as well depending on the map.

Are you in Michigan for the 2013 Linguistic Institute? Come and visit us for our Open House! Stop by to talk to the staff and students about their work here and the possible opportunities that await. We will be open to the public for two times: Thursday July 11th from 9-2 and Friday July 12th from 2-5. We plan on making it an informal event, so bring your friends and stop in throughout the two session times.

The easiest way to get here from downtown Ann Arbor is to take “The Ride” on line 3 for $1.50. You can get on at two locations: Ann and State or Glen and Catherine. Take this into Ypsilanti and it will go down Washtenaw Avenue. Your stop will be on Huron River Drive at the Eastern Michigan University Stadium. The LINGUIST List is across the street from the stadium bus stop inside the Cooper Building. On Thursday, one of our interns, Thomas Haider, will be guiding people to the Cooper building from the Ann and State Street stop. The bus will pick people up at 8:55am and Tom will be there around 8:45am. If you miss the bus, the buses run about every half hour and you can take another one into town.

If you get lost, you can call us at 734-487-0144. We look forward to seeing you!

Here’s Tom, your friendly tour guide and the face to look for at the bus stop.

This summer, we are happy to welcome 10 interns for this summer! They will be put to work by working on various projects such as ELCat, LL-MAP, and MultiTree. Congratulations interns on being selected for 2013! If you are interested in becoming an intern, be on the look-out for our application cycle to open again next spring. In the mean time, there are other ways to get involved here at LINGUIST List. Just contact us for more information.

Eric Benzschawel [ˈbɛn.ʃɑl]

Eric at the Basler Münster in Basel, Switzerland, taken last spring when he was studying abroad at Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg (Breisgau), Germany.

I’m Eric Benzschawel, a BA candidate for spring 2013, receiving a degree in Linguistics with honors and Germanic Studies, and minors in Dutch and Western European Studies. I’ll be working this summer as an intern at the LINGUIST List through early August, contributing primarily on the MultiTree and LL-MAP projects. I speak German and Dutch as second languages.

My personal areas of interest in linguistics are: syntax, morphosyntax, morphology, corpus linguistics, and computational linguistics. I’m a Germanophile too, so I enjoy Germanic historical linguistics or linguistic work on modern Germanic languages. I have a keen interest in Faroese everything (seems like such a cool place!) and histories of Germanic peoples, especially the Dutch Golden Age and the Holy Roman Empire.

All the schoolwork definitely keeps me busy, but that doesn’t mean there’s no free time! I deeply enjoy reading high fantasy, science fiction, history, and linguistics books. I enjoy music of all genres and play saxophone in the Indiana University Marching Hundred. I’m also a fan of football (Green Bay Packers), college basketball (Indiana Hoosiers), hockey (Chicago Blackhawks), and soccer (Seattle Sounders FC, Deutsche Nationalmannschaft, Nederlands voetbalelftal).

Emily Remirez

Emily with her dog Sophie.

I was born and raised on the Gulf Coast of Texas and am currently a junior at Rice University in Houston, majoring in Linguistics with a concentration in Cognitive Science and minoring in Anthropology. I have been interested in language for as long as I can remember, and there is very little that I dislike about linguistics. My main interests (for now)are L1 acquisition, cognitive linguistics, linguistic relativity, animal communication, language typology, syntax, morphology, Central and South American languages, language contact, creoles and pidgins, historical linguistics, and phonology. Outside of linguistics, I like animals, reading, Wes Anderson movies, absurdity, science fiction, and Arrested Development.

Dana Fallon

Dana enjoying the scenery in Cinque Terre, Italy.

My name is Dana Fallon and I’m just about to graduate from the University of California, Santa Barbara, with a BA in Linguistics! I also have a French minor and I had the wonderful opportunity of studying abroad in Lyon, France, last year, during which I got to travel through a lot of Europe. In addition to French, I’ve studied Japanese and some Latin. In my spare time, I’m usually playing guitar or piano, knitting/crocheting, or seeking out dogs to play with.

Kaveh Varjoy

Kaveh at a 2012 piano recital with three of his students.

My name is Kaveh Varjoy. I’m a California-born-and-raised linguistics major at UCSB, going into my senior year. I spend my free time going through used bookstores, splashing around in the ocean, and playing the piano (or at least trying to). My favorite TV show is Arrested Development (it’s back – yay!) and my favorite book is Dante’s Divina Commedia, and there is no limit to the amount of music I enjoy, though I do have a soft spot for jazz and the rat pack. My interests in linguistics are based around language documentation – especially sign languages and Deaf culture, North American languages, and African languages – and the sociocultural intersect between form, identity, and (in)justice/equality.

Bryn Hauk

I have known since high school that my passion was linguistics, but it wasn’t until my freshman year at the University of Michigan that I learned of the myriad subfields from which I was expected to choose a lifelong path. Having tried and loved everything from semantics to second-language acquisition, I finally discovered documentary linguistics, which seemed to combine the best parts of all specializations with the added bonus of fieldwork in faraway places. I have been lucky enough to do just that in northwest Russia with the Veps people, and I hope to continue documenting indigenous languages of Russia in the future as I pursue my MA at EMU. At the LINGUIST List, I get the opportunity to flex my documentary muscles working on our Catalogue of Endangered Languages and to learn important new technologies and scripting languages.

Myles Gurule

I’m a sophomore at Brown University, tentatively planning to double-major in Computer Science and Linguistics. My interests include formal language theory, natural language processing, and Slavic languages. I grew up in northern New Mexico and in my spare time, I coach policy debate, read, and go hiking. I’m excited to learn about current linguistic research and discussion as well as the practical linguistic applications of CS.

Jacob Collard

Jacob at a May Day Festival, performing a Longsword Dance.

I am a rising Junior at Swarthmore College and have now been interested in linguistics for over six years, doing work with endangered languages (Ju|’hoan, Valley Zapotec, and Cherokee), computational linguistics, and syntax. I’m also interested in storytelling, writing, and literature, as well as folkdance, board games, and roleplaying games. I tend to lose myself in the forest, as I enjoy hiking and exploring, which I try to do every day.

Lesley Dennison

Hi, I’m Lesley and I am excited to join The LINGUIST List as an ELCat team member! I’ve been interested in languages ever since high school French class, where I would write notes to my best friend in IPA.I graduated from Eastern Michigan University in April of 2013 with a BA in Linguistics and a minor in Japanese. I will be starting my MA in Linguistics at Eastern in the fall of 2013.When I am not doing linguistics, I like to read, write, travel and cater to my adorable cat, Esteban.

Sara Couture

I recently earned a Bachelor’s degree in Linguistics with a minor in German from Wayne State University and I’m currently a summer intern at LINGUIST List. At LINGUIST List, I’m mainly working on the MultiTree project, but I’m also part of the Catalogue of Endangered Languages team and the LL-MAP team. I’m really excited about being immersed in linguistics all summer, learning about the nuts and bolts of language documentation and the technology that is involved.

In hindsight, majoring in Linguistics was inevitable for me. I was one of those nerdy kids who liked to make my own secret codes and alphabets and had notebooks filled with information about Elvish and other constructed languages. Language has always been one of my passions. But I didn’t find the formal field of linguistics until college. I had decided to major in English with the vague notion of becoming an editor or a technical writer. The English degree had a theory requirement, and I chose an Introduction to Linguistics. I absolutely loved it, and when I found out I could become an editor with a Linguistics degree as well as an English degree, I switched majors immediately and the rest is history.

I have an insatiable curiosity about all things linguistic, so it is very difficult for me to narrow down my interests. But at the moment, my primary interests are historical linguistics, dialectology, sociolinguistics, syntax, Germanic linguistics, Celtic linguistics, and English linguistics. Outside of linguistics, I’m always in search of a good story to keep me entertained. I love to read and watch movies. I have a wide, eclectic taste in genres, and I have dabbled in fantasy, science fiction, mystery, historical, classic, thriller, horror, contemporary or westerns. When I’m not doing any of these things, I try to give my mole eyes a rest and go bike riding.

Thomas Haider

I was born 1985 in the area of Munich, Germany. After a sheltered childhood in the middle of Bavaria and some education I pursued an apprenticeship in a physics lab, followed by some more education, a civilservice in a youth hostel to finally end up in Heidelberg to study Computational Linguistics and Philosophy. Apart from one year abroad in the Netherlands I have been there for 5 years now, meanwhile enrolled in a Masters programme, writing and reading poetry on stage, dealing with lexical semantics, transgressing borders of verbose gibberish and densified expression.

In this series of blog posts, we’ve asked some LINGUIST List staff members to share what it’s like to work at LINGUIST. This post was written by Rebekah McClure. She is currently finishing her first year in the Master’s program in linguistics at Eastern Michigan University. At The LINGUIST List, Rebekah is the Publications Manager and a member of the MultiTree and LL-MAP projects.

Rebekah showed here breaking the norm by eating a relaxing meal free of distractions at a local Vietnamese restaurant.

5:00 am Jump out of bed to silence the abominable noise that is my alarm. Try not to let the fact that it won’t be light out for another three hours get me down.

5:01.005 am Retract previous thought. Think new thought about how I actually just like saving a few bucks on monthly utilities bills but that my goose bumps feel infinitely more noble when they come in the name of energy conservation.

5:46 am Drive to the gym and to my secret life as a weightlifting enthusiast.

6:00 am Squeeze in a workout before a day of LINGUIST List, classes, and yoga teaching.

10:01 am Greet my office mates Brent, the effervescent coffee savant and committed vegan, and Danniella, the perpetually imperturbable British expat and four-time marathoner. Exchange stories of tofurkey and opinions on the best brand of running shoes.

10:05 am Realize I should probably turn my computer on and get to work.

10:07 am Persist in conversing anyway.

10:10 am Turn my computer on and get to work.

10:11 am Log in to email account and check the schedule for meetings and project deadlines that day. Realize that I should have turned my computer on and gotten to work ten minutes ago.

10:13 am Approve Publisher submissions. Find someone in the office to translate one of the descriptions for a German publishing house. Go through my multiple options of German-speaking coworkers and think of how, in times like these, I’m grateful to be working with linguists, many of whom are polyglots.

11:03 am Write an email to (yet another) confused user explaining that you must click on “Submit Journal Information” even if you simply want to register as a publisher and that no, I don’t know why it’s set up that way.

11:06 am Read Journal submissions and be in awe of the multitudinous academic paths a linguist can take and consequently write an article about for a journal. Courtroom discourse or Zulu phonology? Transformational Grammar or politeness phenomena? Realize how much I have yet to learn about the field of linguistics.

11:36 am Draft an email requesting that a user include more information in her Table of Contents submission.

11:40 am Email a reply to a hopeful graduate student and explain that LINGUIST List simply announces new publications—it does not publish books or journals itself—and that I’m sorry your dissertation has been rejected by every other academic publisher but I just can’t help you.

11:42 am Worry about my future as an academic linguist a little bit.

12:06 pm Nibble on lunch as I scan my LINGUIST List intranet page to make sure there aren’t any Publisher, Journal, Journal Calls for Papers, or Table of Contents submissions I missed. Dip broccoli into hummus with left hand and assign with right hand Linguistic Fields to one last Journal description that just came in.

12:27 pm Write an email to (yet another) confused user explaining that you must click on “Submit Journal Information” even if you simply want to register as a publisher and that no, I don’t know why it’s set up that way.

1:27 pm Return to my office and see three new Publisher submissions for me to approve. Get overwhelmed by new projects.

1:30 pm Explain to a LINGUIST user via email that I’m afraid Klingon is actually not spoken in parts of Cameroon and perhaps you should consider checking your sources before submitting this Journal description.

1:32 pm Worry about my future as an academic linguist a lot.

2:00 pm Conclude worrying about my future as an academic linguist and resolve to forge onward regardless of what lies ahead.

2:01 pm Meet with the PR team. Get excited about new projects.

2:33 pm Receive half a dozen emails from the Benevolent Overpig, our task management system, assigning the new projects just discussed. Get overwhelmed by new projects.

2:35 pm Begin work on a language map of the Kamchatkan peninsula. Type out a long, detailed inquiry in an instant message to Sarah, my tireless LL-MAP “buddy” who tutors me on the intricacies of GPS data points. Acknowledge that it would have saved me time if I had simply gotten up and walked to her office ten feet away. Simultaneously acknowledge that when faced with a similar situation tomorrow I will undoubtedly act in the same manner.

3:36 pm Watch videos of toddlers on YouTube and analyze what stage of phonological development they could be passing through.

4:45 pm Leave class with a renewed sense of amazement at the language learning process.

4:46 pm Decide to stay on campus to get some homework done. Struggle through a worksheet in which I’m supposed to analyze the morphology of Tok Pisin, a Papa New Guinean creole that I had never heard of prior to last week.

6:28 pm Chug a protein shake for dinner on my way to teach yoga at the local community college health and fitness center.

7:00 pm Get my zen on.

8:37 pm Return to my apartment feeling calm and collected. Greet my husband and exchange stories from our respective days, each of us making sure the other knows the intricacy and arduousness of the trials we’ve overcome in the past twelve hours.

8:50 pm Put on my thick wool sweater. Read about a former LINGUIST List intern who got into a prestigious PhD program and scored a sweet research grant. Worry about my future as an academic linguist a little less.

The LL-MAPteam is happy to announce the completion of the digital adaptation of the Linguistic Survey of India map collection. This important series of maps was a survey of the languages of British India, conducted in the first several decades of the 20th century by the British Raj and directed by Irish linguist George A. Grierson. The maps show the locations of dialects, languages, and language families in India, phonetic and morphological distribution, and language contact information. In our digitized versions, we have included the maximal language coding possible (i.e., if a name could refer to either a language or a subgroup, we include codes for both).

LL-MAP resources are freely available for public use. For information on how to use the LL-MAP interface, please visit the Online Help Section of the LL-MAP website or email the LL-MAP team at llmap-contact@linguistlist.org.

Many thanks to our former intern, Andrew Peters, who put in a substantial amount of time last summer getting these maps scanned, georegistered, vectorized, uploaded, and styled. Andrew designed this set of maps to be interoperable, so that the different language families can be easily distinguished when several maps are layered together in the LL-MAP interface. In the map credits, Andrew also identified several other sets of maps that may be of comparative interest.

The LL-MAP project has been a hub of activity this summer. Our team of graduate students conducted internal training workshops in May and June to train incoming interns on mapmaking using Global Mapper and the LL-MAP uploader, and our team has been pumping out fascinating language maps all summer.

In June, LL-MAP was also featured at two workshops. I had the honor of presenting the LL-MAP Scholar’s Workbench at the Language Documentation 3 conference at the University of Bolzano in Bolzano (Bozen), Italy. The topic of this year’s conference was Language Mapping, and I showed attendees how to use LL-MAP for language research and how to begin making their own maps in the Scholar’s Workbench. LL-MAP was also the central topic in a workshop on language mapping taught by Anthony Aristar, Helen Aristar-Dry, and Joshua Thompson at the CoLang 2012 Institute hosted by the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas.

In preparation for the 2012 Language Mapping Workshop, the LL-MAP team realized that we needed an answer to the question–“How do I use the most basic features of the LL-MAP Map Viewer?” As a quick (and visual) answer to this question, the team has created the Quick Reference Guide to LL-MAP!

First unveiled at our workshop, now you can enjoy it too! This incredibly useful guide features numbered boxes designating the most important parts of the LL-MAP interface and a key to the features listed in these boxes. By following the order listed on the map and using the map key on the next page, users can now easily and quickly navigate the LL-MAP interface and grasp the most essential features of LL-MAP.

While we worked tirelessly in preparation for this workshop to enumerate all aspects of LL-MAP in our help pages, we have now highlighted the most essential features of LL-MAP in our Quick Reference Guide so that you can start using LL-MAP now. Haven’t used LL-MAP before? Start using the Quick Reference Guide and you’ll be up to speed in no time. And if you’ve already been viewing the maps in this wonderful project, you may want to use the Quick Reference Guide to make sure you aren’t missing out on any of the great features that LL-MAP offers for your research or teaching needs.

Friday, 4/13, 11 am – 1 pm: The LL-MAP Scholar’s Workbench Workshop will introduce attendees to using the LL-MAP interface and Scholar’s Workbench tool, including tutorials on how to map your own data. The workshop is open to the public, and will be held at Eastern Michigan University’s Halle Library, room 111. If you’d like to attend, please register here:

Friday, 4/13, 1:30 pm: ILIT faculty affiliate Dr. Maƚgosia Ćavar will be presenting a talk at LINGUIST List entitled On the influence of L1 on L2 perception: The case of tenseness contrast in American vowels. This will also be open to anyone– if you’re in the Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti area, you’re invited to attend! For those unfortunate readers who can’t make it to Michigan, we’ll be recording Dr. Ćavar’s talk and making it available online.

The Institute for Language Information and Technology (ILIT) at Eastern Michigan University invites any interested students and faculty for a mapping tutorial on April 13, 2012, at 11:00 a.m. in Halle Library Room 111. This tutorial will introduce the LL-MAP database and provide a hands-on demonstration of the LL-MAP Scholar’s Workbench.

LL-MAP (Language and Location: A Map Accessibility Project, llmap.org) is a database of maps with geospatially-referenced information about existing languages. LL-MAP also includes a user-friendly online interface which organizes linguistic, geographic and social sciences information into customizable map layers. Scholars and students can use the newly-updated database interface to query and compare language maps, draw new hypotheses about language, layer different maps together, and even share a map on Facebook!

Another feature of LL-MAP that has recently been released is the Scholar’s Workbench. In this workspace, scholars can upload their own data or use existing datasets to create new maps showing their hypotheses about linguistic phenomena. In this workshop, we will be demonstrating the possibilities of this dynamic and user-friendly uploading facility. In a hands-on demonstration, participants will go through the process of turning data into a language map by uploading a data set as well as styling and describing it.

Registration is free but space is limited. Please go to the following web address to register: